Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Inside the Supreme Court and More From APA’s 2016 Annual Meeting

Highlights from Day Four

Our coverage of APA’s Annual Meeting continues with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s address on the inside workings of the Supreme Court; a report on the results of an APA poll on “phantom” insurance networks; and the continued debate over the ethics of involuntary outpatient commitment laws.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke today at APA’s 2016 Annual Meeting in Atlanta about his latest book, The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities, and what it’s like to work at the highest court in the land. Read More >

Thomas Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told attendees at APA’s Convocation of Distinguished Fellows that depression and severe mental illness, alcoholism, opioid addiction, suicide, HIV/AIDS, and a host of other conditions are amenable to solutions that look at broad societal influences, as well as the factors that influence individual behavior. Read More >

In a session at today’s Annual Meeting, Nathan Fairman, M.D., M.P.H., and Scott A. Irwin, M.D., Ph.D., described the expanding interface between palliative medicine and psychiatry and opportunities for psychiatrists to enhance the care of seriously ill patients and their loved ones. Read More >

Because of frequently heard complaints that patients are unable to find a psychiatrist in their insurance network who is available to see them within a reasonable time or even at all, APA engaged the American Psychiatric Association Foundation to conduct a study to see how pervasive this problem really is. The results were announced yesterday at APA’s 2016 Annual Meeting. Read More >

Reducing death and injury by firearms should focus less on people who are mentally ill and more on reducing access to lethal means by individuals who want to harm themselves or others, according to Jeffrey Swanson, Ph.D. There is only a tiny intersection between gun violence and mental illness, he pointed out. Read More >

Are involuntary outpatient commitment laws a good thing? Depends on who you ask and how that person is looking at the question, said experts in a symposium yesterday at APA’s 2016 Annual Meeting. Read More >

Opioid misuse is at epidemic proportions in the United States, with deaths due to opioid overdose quadrupling since 1999. Shedding some light on ways to address this problem through science, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) sponsored an Annual Meeting session on therapeutic developments that may one day potentially be used to help reverse this public health crisis. Read More >

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